JRuby-OpenSSL

JRuby-OpenSSL is an extension gem for JRuby that emulates the Ruby OpenSSL native library.

Under the hood it uses the Bouncy Castle Crypto APIs.

All jruby-openssl gem releases include the Bouncy Castle library (BC Provider, BC JSSE and PKIX/CMS/EAC/PKCS/OCSP/TSP/OPENSSL jars), usually the latest available version.

Please report bugs and incompatibilities (preferably with test-cases) to either the JRuby mailing list or the bug tracker.

Compatibility

Check latest jruby-openssl gem spec's jar requirements for compatibility.

require 'openssl'
JOpenSSL::VERSION

For older versions of the gem compatibility wasn't reported:

JRuby-OpenSSL	JRuby compat	JVM compat	supported BC
~>0.12.x	9.1.x-9.3.x	Java 8-15	1.65-1.68
~>0.13.x	9.1.x-9.4.x	Java 8-17	1.68-1.69
~>0.14.x	9.1.x-9.4.x	Java 8-21	1.71-1.74
~>0.15.x	9.2.x-10.0.x	Java 8-25	1.78-1.83
~>0.16.x	9.3.x-10.0.x	Java 8-25	1.83-1.85

Security

JRuby-OpenSSL is an essential part of JRuby, please report security vulnerabilities to security@jruby.org as detailed on JRuby's security page or using GitHub.

Please note that most OpenSSL vulnerabilities do not affect JRuby since it's not using any of OpenSSL's C code, only Ruby parts (*.rb) are the same as in MRI's OpenSSL library.

Supported configuration

Most runtime knobs are Java system properties. Under JRuby you pass them as -J-D... flags, e.g. JRUBY_OPTS='-J-Djruby.openssl.debug=true'.

Runtime / JVM properties

Property	Default	Effect
jruby.openssl.load.jars	true	If set to false, lib/jopenssl/load.rb skips auto-loading the bundled BouncyCastle jars - handy when the BC jars are on the JVM classpath.
jruby.openssl.debug	false	Turns on internal debug logging and stack traces from the Java extension, has the same effect as setting OpenSSL.debug = true at runtime.
jruby.openssl.warn	follows JRuby's warning mode (runtime.warningsEnabled())	Enables or disables warnings from the extension, set false to stay quiet regardless of -w.
jruby.openssl.log.logger	default stdout/stderr logger	Selects the internal logger implementation, set to JUL to route logs through java.util.logging.
jruby.openssl.log.silence	true	Silences a few noisy BC / BC-JSSE loggers by default, set false to leave their levels untouched.
jruby.openssl.provider.ssl	BCJSSE	Selects the SSL provider. BCJSSE, BC, or true all mean BC-JSSE, an empty string or false falls back to the platform JSSE provider.
jruby.openssl.ssl.error_wait_nonblock.backtrace	falls back to jruby.errno.backtrace (which defaults to false)	Whether SSLErrorWaitReadable / SSLErrorWaitWritable carry backtraces.
jruby.openssl.x509.lookup.cache	disabled	Caching for X.509 lookup results. true turns on a soft cache; an integer such as 8 gives a bounded strong/soft cache of that size, unset or false disables it.

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Effect
SSL_CERT_FILE	platform / packaged default CA file	Overrides the default certificate bundle used for X.509 default-path loading, .crt, .cer, or .pem are read as a PEM bundle, otherwise treated as a Java CA store path.
SSL_CERT_DIR	platform / packaged default CA directory	Overrides the default certificate directory list for X.509 default-path loading, separate multiple directories with the platform path separator.
OPENSSL_ALLOW_PROXY_CERTS	unset / disabled	When set to anything other than false, proxy certificates are allowed during certificate chain validation.

Other supported customizations

• OpenSSL.debug = true gives you the same internal debug logging as -Djruby.openssl.debug=true
• when jruby.openssl.warn is unset, JRuby's own warning mode (ruby -w) decides whether warnings show
• OpenSSL::Config can look up variables from the process environment through the ENV section, matching the upstream Ruby OpenSSL config parser

Differences from OpenSSL

JRuby-OpenSSL aims to be a source-compatible drop-in for MRI's openssl - same Ruby API and same require 'openssl'. But there are limitations on the JVM (with JCE and JSSE) as well as Bouncy Castle libraries, so some entry points are unavailable, behave differently, or are no-ops.

Engine

• OpenSSL::Engine is not implemented - there is no hardware/engine layer, OpenSSL::Engine.* raises NameError (uninitialized constant)

SSL / TLS (backed by JSSE)

• SSLSocket#state and NPN (#npn_protocol) are unimplemented and return nil - use ALPN instead
• Forced session resumption (SSLSocket#session=) is best-effort and only fully works with the BouncyCastle JSSE provider; session_reused? may return nil ("can't decide")
• SSL::Session#id= / #time= are no-ops; SSL::Session.new on a non-socket raises NotImplementedError
• Hostname / subjectAltName matching runs over Java's certificate parsing and can differ from MRI's GeneralName handling in edge cases

Cipher (JCE / Bouncy Castle)

• The available cipher set is provider-dependent (what JCE/BC offer on your JVM), not the fixed libcrypto list (some OpenSSL ciphers may be missing or vary by JDK)
• CFB1 mode (*-cfb1) is excluded (doesn't match OpenSSL under BC)
• AEAD is limited to what JCE exposes; iv_len= on a non-AEAD cipher raises

PKey (EC / DH / EdDSA)

• EC is limited to prime curves (:GFp); binary-field curves (:GF2m) fail
• EC::Point#mul with array arguments, :hybrid point compression, and encrypted EC private-key export are not implemented
• DH#set_pqg accepts but silently ignores the q parameter
• EdDSA (Ed25519 / Ed448) rejects digest arguments

X509

• multi-valued RDNs (the + separator in a DN string) are not supported and raise X509::NameError.
• few authorityKeyIdentifier extension configurations are unsupported

Random

• randomness comes from the JVM's SecureRandom; the EGD and seed-file APIs (Random.egd, egd_bytes, load_random_file, write_random_file) are no-ops

Other

• OpenSSL.fips_mode = true raises NotImplementedError unless the separate FIPS variant gem is installed
• some rarely-used entry points are no-ops (OpenSSL.check_func, deprecated_warning_flag) and OPENSSL_NO_SOCK is nil rather than a boolean
• a few PKCS7 content types can't be reconstructed purely from ASN.1 (may surface when parsing some S/MIME structures)

Hitting something not listed here that MRI's OpenSSL supports? Please report it on the bug tracker, ideally with a test case.

FIPS

A FIPS 140-3 build of jruby-openssl is available as a separate gem. It's the very same library but uses the NIST-validated BC FIPS module (BC-FJA) instead of regular Bouncy Castle, for deployments that need a validated cryptographic module. Ships separately under GPL 3.0, with commercial licensing available - see the FIPS variant wiki page for details.

NOTE: unlike C OpenSSL, OpenSSL.fips_mode cannot be changed at runtime, the flag reports which gem variant is activated (true under the FIPS gem, false otherwise).

License

(c) 2009-2026 JRuby distributed under EPL 1.0 / GPL 2.0 / LGPL 2.1